Inexpensive Computer Upgrades - Comments Page 1

As far as hardware upgrades go, those are right on target--and in that order. RAM by far gives you the most bang for the buck.

One guideline that should be added is a benchmark of cost-effectiveness. How much is it going to cost to get the upgrade hardware compared to getting a new computer that may have most of that in it in the first place? An electrical engineer once advised me that if the fix costs more than half the cost of replacement, you should replace. That's not a bad guideline.

'YES... spelling, punctuation, grammar and proper use of UPPER/lower case are important!'

Too true.

So when you say 'You can have "work" on one monitor and "other" on a second, i.e., Twitter, weather, stock quotes, sports news, etc.', I think that 'i.e.' should be an 'e.g.', shouldn't it?

The ram upgrade path is not quite as straight forward as it appears. If you have a 32 bit version of Windows and install 4GB Windows will only make use of 3GB or less. The various incremental increases in memory produce decreasing benefits. In XP going from 256MB to 512 produces a dramatic improvement in performance. Going up to 1GB offers a worthwhile improvement, but thereafter the benefits decline. I defy anyone to demonstrate that going from 1GB to 2GB or more in Windows XP provides a useful improvement in performance.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I don't have any scientific proof, but I've upgraded quite a few systems from 1GB to 2GB and it always seems to make a big difference, especially reducing hard drive thrashing caused by paging.

We all know that old cathode ray tube monitors are measured diagonally - a 15" monitor is 15 inches from the upper left corner to the lower right corner.

Seems like I heard that flat screens are NOT measured diagonally; a 23" monitor, for example, is 23 inches along its longest (left to right, normally) dimension. If so, screen sizes measurements are not directly comparable. What is correct?

EDITOR'S NOTE: As far as I know, they are still measured along the diagonal. I've always thought that misleading, but that's marketing...

What great, simple info! You seem to make the complex understandable. I will forward you to my friends (so they will quit bugging me).

If you have a large flat screen tv use that as an alternate screen for your pc. My 36" widescreen has multiple inputs and I use one HDMI input for tv and another for the computer.

By using a wireless mouse & keyboard you can then sit in your favorite easy chair and access your pc as well.

It's possible to buy a new computer for about $250. No, it's not going to be top of the line, but it'll certainly come with at least 2GB RAM, at least 250GB of disk, and a faster processor than the one in your aging PC. And the motherboard graphics processor on the cheap new PC will certainly be faster, too. So how can you you justify throwing money into that old PC???

Hi, I have a relatively new laptop that uses Vista. I am thinking of getting a larger monitor which would be hooked up to the laptop. I am wondering whether or not it would be better to go with a relatively inexpensive LCD tv with HDMI or just with a straight monitor (about 23inches). Is there any difference in quality between going with a monitor and a TV?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Probably yes. I hooked up a 42-inch TV to my computer, and the image was very grainy. I think that's because each pixel ends up being much larger than when it's on a smaller monitor. If you get a TV that can handle very high resolutions, then it might be better. My TV was unable to display the highest resolution of my graphics card, which is 1680x1050.

I'm a former IT guy and I can attest to this. One significant point in favor of keeping your old PC is keeping the Operating System you're comfortable with. Personally, I currently have 750 MBs of RAM and plan to max out the RAM (2 gigs) in my old Dell. That should do me fine.....PLUS quite frankly, I'm perfectly happy with XP. It's that simple. Maxing out the RAM really makes a difference.

"I defy anyone to demonstrate that going from 1GB to 2GB or more in Windows XP provides a useful improvement in performance."

I use Photoshop daily, working with files at a minimum size of 12MB, and I can attest to the improvement when I upped my XP box from 1GB to 4GB. It probably didn't see all 4GB, but anything that keeps your work in RAM and not on the swap disk is going to help speed things up. I'm now on Vista 64 with 6GB RAM and I can run Lightroom and Photoshop together with no appreciable slowdowns.

I'm pretty sure you can find some tests at someplace like Tom's Hardware to support the RAM improvement.

I read this blog and would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except NICE BLOG with a lot of information.

Instead of upgrades to your hardware have a look at Ubuntu

Hello there names pete, I have a problem with a computer here, it reposts, in other words when I switch the computer it posts normally, but then goes back and repost again and again, it does not boot with the hdd, I checked in the bios, and it seems ok first boot, hdd, please I have run out of option and dont know what esle to try, can someone help me or give suggestions how to continue with troubleshooting?